Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Remarks by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin which compared baptism to waterboarding.
Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists.
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Faithful America, an online Christian community, responding to Sarah Palin’s remarks.
For Christians, torture is not a joke or a political punchline, but a ghastly reminder of the suffering of Jesus upon the cross. By equating it with Holy Baptism — the act by which we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection — Sarah Palin is blasphemously twisting our faith into a weapon of hatred and violence. No media outlet should cover her remarks without reporting on how sincere Christians of all theological and political persuasions are appalled.
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David Barton, explaining that women were denied the right to vote in order to “keep the family together.”
Clearly, what [the listener] has asked is a brilliant question because it does reveal that the bigotry we’re told they held back then, they didn’t hold and what they did was they put the family unit higher than the government unit and they tried to work hard to keep the family together. And, as we can show in two or three hundred studies since then, the more you weaken the family, the more it hurts the entire culture and society.
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Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, speaking at what was supposed to be a nonpartisan National Day of Prayer Event.
President Obama, before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion president. He didn’t make any bones about it.
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Pat Roberson, advising a viewer against engaging atheists on social media because they are “swine.”
You don’t have to do that. The Bible also says you don’t have to cast your pearls before swine because they will turn and rend you.
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Hillary Clinton, speaking to the United Methodist Women Assembly in Louisville.
In the story, when the hour grows late and the crowd grows hungry, the disciples come to Jesus and suggest they send away the people to find food, to fend for themselves. Jesus said ‘No, you feed them.’ He was teaching a lesson about the responsibly we all share to step up and serve the community, especially to help those with the greatest need and the fewest resources.
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Cliven Bundy’s attempt to explain his much-publicized remarks about slavery.
I am standing up against [the federal government’s] bad and unconstitutional laws, just like Rosa Parks did when she refused to sit in the back of the bus.
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Peggy Venable of the Texas affiliate of Americans for Prosperity, quoting Thomas Jefferson. One problem: Jefferson never actually said this.
Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading.
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Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on a group of North Carolina clergy filing a lawsuit against the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
It puts those of us who advocate both for marriage as the union of a man and a woman and for religious liberty, including the liberty of Christians to hold fast to a Christian and biblical understanding of marriage, in a very difficult position.
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Bob Harvey of the Greater Houston Partnership, announcing the organization’s support of Houston’s proposed Equal Rights Ordinance.
The Partnership believes that Houston is already a great city that is welcoming and embraces diversity. Adopting the ordinance now is essentially a reaffirmation of who we are and what we believe: that all Houstonians should be able to live, work and enjoy our great city.
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Houston City Attorney David Feldman, telling the city council that Houston is the last of America’s largest cities not to have local anti-discrimination protections.
The city is clearly behind the times.
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Just one of the vitriolic attacks by religious-right groups against Houston’s proposed Equal Rights Ordinance
Why should the 99% of the population who are NOT gender confused be forced to accommodate the less than 1% who are? Why is the physical and emotional safety of women and children who accept their birth gender less important than the tiny few who suffer from what has always been considered a psychological disorder? The Holy Scriptures state clearly that, ‘…male and female He created them,’ (Gen. 1:27) and we choose to stand with Him and basic biology that sex is determined at conception, identified at birth.
Remarks by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin which compared baptism to waterboarding:
“Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists.”
This is a perfect example of the fact that you, me, Muslims, Buddhists, and Islamic terrorists all share one thing in common. In the eyes of some so-called “Christian” groups, WE ARE DEFINED BY WHO WE ARE NOT. In this case, we are not a member of the Assembly of God denomination, which makes each of us one of THEM. In their eyes, we are all sons and daughters of Satan, and waterboarding is what we all deserve. This week it is waterboarding a Muslim terrorist. I wonder who it will be next week or next year: Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Beer Bubba, a competent science teacher?
I think it’s important to watch the Palin video because you are exposed to her shrill, shrew-like, screechy voice and her hokey accent.
Can you imagine Palin as any kind of leader with a voice and delivery like that? These are not measured tones of a politician or leader, they are the screeches of a mentally-unhinged rabble rouser.
True Doc Bill. However, if I were Putin, I would be scared if she were President. Putin is playing brinksmanship right now in Ukraine because he thinks he has Obama all figured out and knows what he will or will not do. The only thing predictable about Sarah Palin is that she is irrational and unpredictable. A person would have to be crazy to even consider playing brinksmanship with her.